End of Autumn Quarter Update

Melissa Johnson (on the left) and Monica Tucker (on the right) carefully handle artifacts from the Ng Shing Gung temple's display.

Greetings once again from Stacey. The lab has been quite busy this past autumn quarter. Erica Simmons, a senior Archaeology major who worked on the Market Street Chinatown Project last year, has been volunteering her spare time in the lab since September. She has been a great help, and in just a short time, finished cataloguing a large portion of the glass from Feature 18. In the meantime, I have continued to catalogue buttons from the entire assemblage.

An "Aromatic Schnapps" bottle currently on display at History San Jose, artifact number 86-36:17-118.

This month I also had the opportunity to catalogue and photograph the artifacts on display at History San Jose. History San Jose’s Melissa Johnson and Monica Tucker were extremely helpful in assisting me with this task. They were kind enough to lend me the museum’s photography studio, where the photograph to the left was taken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Featured Artifact

A "Sweet Pea" serving vessel, artifact number 86-36:5-09.

This week’s featured artifact is currently on display at History San Jose’s reconstructed Ng Shing Gung temple. According to the Asian American Comparative Collection’s (AACC) terminologies, this vessel is a “liquor warmer.” It could have also been used as a teapot or sauce-serving bottle. Its decoration is commonly known as “Sweet Pea”, but is also sometimes called “Plant with Central Flower”, “Shanghai Ware”, or “Simple Flower”.